Poem fractal

The Lady of Trees

by Mary Coleridge

23 September 1861 to 25 August 1907 (~46)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Art is an odd thing, isn't it? It's almost the only thing that seems to me to remain unchanged throughout one's life.”

Seeing art as a rare continuity across the changes of a lifetime · Gathered Leaves, letters and diaries, 1897–1907

More remarks (39)

Drawing the boundary…

Read the poem Another poem

A fractal is a shape that keeps its pattern when you look closer. Coastlines, trees, shells, and weather do this. A poem can be drawn the same way.

The poem’s constant is read from the build of its lines: their length, the size of the stanzas, and the share of vowels. Poems whose constants lie closer together are built more alike. The same poem always draws the same picture. Change the length of a line, the stanza, or the vowel share, and both the number and the picture move.

Primunia is the name for the source of that order: the pattern under the pattern, already there in a tree, a shell, and a verse.

Poems nearby in the constant

A smaller distance means the lines are built more alike.

  1. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.0381 − 0.6629i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. Frances E. W. Harper · −0.0402 − 0.6427i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  3. Anonymous · −0.0431 − 0.6445i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  4. A. A. Milne · −0.0483 − 0.6737i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. Sir Charles Sedley · −0.0170 − 0.6789i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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